Join Maddie Moate and her team as they explore behind the scenes at London's Royal Botanic Gardens and discover some of the world's most exciting and rare carnivorous plants.
What is a carnivorous plant?
Most plants, like the flowers in your garden and trees in your local park, get nutrients from the sun, rain, and the soil they grow in.
However, carnivorous plants live in habitats where the soil lacks essential nutrients, so they've evolved to find other ways of getting the food they need to grow.
Using hidden traps and digestive juices (like those in your stomach), carnivorous plants catch and eat the local wildlife to survive.
The three types of Carnivorous plants:
Sticky carnivorous plants
Sticky carnivorous plants, like the Sundew (Drosera), grow leaves covered in a sticky goo that insects often mistake for sweet nectar. When tiny hairs over the Sundew's leaves detect movement from a trapped insect, they curl around it, squishing it until it can no longer escape. The plant then releases digestive juices to break down the insect and extract the essential nutrients it needs to grow.
Trap carnivorous plants
Trap carnivorous plants, like the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), use a series of tiny hair triggers to notify them of nearby prey. When an insect walks across the surface of the plant's leaves, it brushes against tiny hairs. Brush against three or more at once, and SNAP, the plant brings its two mouth-like leaves together, trapping the insect. With nowhere to go, their dinner is broken down into a bug soup and consumed by the plant.
Pitcher carnivorous plants
Pitcher carnivorous plants (Nepenthaceae and Sarraceniaceae) grow cupped leaves shaped like pitcher jugs. These leaves produce digestive juices that pool within the bottom of the cup, and once a passing creature falls in, the juices get to work, breaking down the body to absorb the nutrients.
While most carnivorous plants consume living creatures, there's one plant that craves a different meal entirely.
The poo-eating shrew loo!
Growing within the private nursery greenhouses of Kew Gardens is a rather unique and rare carnivorous plant.
Nepenthes lowii aka The Shrew Loo
Nepenthes lowii are pitcher-style carnivorous plants that have taken a more vegetarian approach to getting their nutrients from nature.
Instead of animals, Nepenthes lowii eats poo.
Commonly known as The Shrew Loo, this peculiar plant has evolved to make itself irresistible to the local mountain treeshrew (Tupaia Montana) population in Borneo.
By producing a sweet and sticky goo from their pitcher lids, the plant invites their four-legged best friend to sit and chow down while simultaneously depositing their droppings into the plant's pitcher.
Once collected, the plant's reservoir of digestive juices breaks down the poo and absorbs the nutrients it needs to survive.
Fascinating carnivorous plant facts
Carnivorous plants are found in almost every continent (sorry, Antarctica) and continue to adapt to their ever-changing habitats.
Nepenthes clipeata, a shield-leaved pitcher plant, only grows on the vertical granite cliff faces of Mount Kelam, Indonesia, and is known to be the rarest of carnivorous plants, with only 15 remaining in the wild.
Until 2022, the Nepenthes truncata pitcher plant growing at Kew Gardens held the Guinness World Record for the 'Longest Nepenthes Pitcher Trap', measuring a staggering 43cm long. The new record of 55.5cm (wow!!) is held by a 45-year-old Nepenthes truncata in Japan.
And lastly, while it may be our favourite, the Shrew Loo isn't the only poo-eating carnivorous plant. Nepenthes hemsleyana, another Borean pitcher plant, doubles as a bat AirBnB, providing shelter for tiny Hardwicke's woolly bats within its specially-evolved bat-safe cup. In return for a safe place to sleep, the plant is rewarded with delicious bat poo to eat. Yum!
Classroom Activities: Carnivorous plants
Here are a few activities you can run in your classroom to help students learn more about carnivorous plants:
Carnivorous plant research projects
As we've learned, there are three types of carnivorous plants: Sticky, Trap, and Pitcher. In your group, produce a fun and informative poster about your chosen type of carnivorous plant. Research the plant's habitat and diet and the varieties of plants within its plant family, and explore the mechanisms of how they trap their prey. Remember to share any other fun facts you find along the way.
Design a new carnivorous plant
We know carnivorous plants use hair triggers, trapdoors, and sticky goo to trap their prey, but what other techniques could they use to catch their next meal? Think about the shape of your new plant, the size of its prey, and its surrounding habitat to create a successful new type of carnivorous plant.
Grow your own Carnivorous plant
Local garden centres and online specialist shops sell many carnivorous plants, including Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, and Sundews. Spend time researching the habitat of your chosen plant and build a classroom terrarium to recreate its natural home.
Nature is AWESOME
Do you want to see more videos about the natural world around us? Check out these other videos from Maddie Moate:
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